The UC Museum of Paleontology's annual Cal Day open house is coming up on Saturday, April 20, 2013, between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm. Find out more about previous UCMP Cal Days. Tours, displays and activities run throughout the day. All UCMP events take place in the Valley Life Sciences building; locations are noted in the schedule below.

Extinction of the Masses: The history of life on Earth has been marked by a handful of major mass extinctions. Find out about the possible causes of these events and what organisms were affected. And of course there will be plenty of fossils of the extinction victims on display! (1101 VLSB)

Extinction of the Masses (continued)

Tours of the UCMP Collections: This is your chance to see the museum's extensive collections, normally closed to the public. Tours and tickets are limited. The free tickets, distributed on a first-come, first-served basis at the tee shirt table (near the T. rex), go fast so come early! Tours leave at 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30. (Wallace Atrium, 1st floor VLSB)

EXTINCTION!: See real specimens that are now gone forever, on the brink, or have been rediscovered. Behold Berkeley's premier collections and talk with scientists from our research departments. Featuring live animals, and a carnival wheel with prizes! Get your Science@Cal passports stamped here. A Berkeley Natural History Museums collaboration, with support from the Department of Integrative Biology and UC Press. (VLSB courtyard)

Fun With Fossils: Experience the thrill of finding fossils of animals millions of years old in this hands-on activity. You may discover Cretaceous microfossils, gar scales, turtle shell … even dinosaur teeth! (3007 VLSB)

Fun With Fossils (second session)

Lecture:* Climate and Catastrophe in the Late Ordovician: What Caused the Extinction of 70% of Species on Earth 450 Million Years Ago and Why Should We Care? (2040 VLSB)

 The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction was one of the largest extinction events in the history of marine life. Hear about recent work aimed at unravelling the causes of the extinction and explaining why some groups survived while others went extinct, and the implications for understanding extinction dynamics in a changing world. Presented by Assistant Professor Seth Finnegan.

Lecture:* Dinosaur Extinction: What Really Happened? (2040 VLSB)

 Dinosaurs were amazingly successful for 160 million years, and birds are their living representatives. What happened at the end of the Cretaceous Period? To understand that, we'll look into the evolutionary histories of dinosaurs to see just what kinds of animals they were, and how life changed 66 million years ago. Presented by Professor Kevin Padian.

 When most people think of sea otters, they think of them as Monterey Bay inhabitants. But sea otters used to populate the entirety of the California coast, including the San Francisco Bay. Come learn about the causes of this local extinction, and the possibility of their reintroduction to our ocean backyard. Presented by grad student Jenny Hofmeister.

Lecture:* Where Have All the Otters Gone? Local Extinction of Sea Otters in the San Francisco Bay (2040 VLSB)

 About 252 million years ago life on Earth came closest to its end in a mass extinction of unparalleled magnitude. After decades of research, the cause of this extinction remains unclear. Now, at UC Berkeley, a team of paleobotanists plan to test a compelling idea of what may have triggered wholesale collapse of ecosystems across the planet using unlikely witnesses: ancient plants. Presented by grad student Jeff Benca.